from the uber-onward dept

Well, that was fast. It seems that Uber, the innovative new transportation offering, keeps running into local regulatory problems... but as soon as the public gets wind of these, the local governments back down. Last month, it was DC backing down on a bill that would artificially inflate Uber's prices. And now, it's Massachusetts. Yesterday, we noted that the Luddite Council "Sealer of Weights & Measures" had ruled that Uber had to shut down in Boston and Cambridge because of these newfangled "GPS" things (and it didn't even know what GPS stood for).

And... just like that, the "Division of Standards" has issued a "modified hearing decision" on the matter, in which it realizes that perhaps GPS isn't such a crazy, awful, dangerous technology after all. Apparently after re-examining "relevant amendments to Handbook 44 by NIST and NCWM" (National Institute of Standards & Technology and the National Conference on Weights and Measures), they've decided that Uber can continue to operate, granted "provisional" approval, which is "pending the outcome of the NIST study and/or the establishment of any standards for the use of such systems."

In other words, crisis averted for now, but wouldn't it be better for local regulatory agencies to think these things through a bit more in the future rather than defaulting to banning any new and innovative offerings?

from the no,-seriously dept

We've written plenty of stories about ridiculous (and ridiculously slow to adapt) government policies that simply don't keep up with the times, which then hinder new, innovative and disruptive services. One company that seems to be running into such things all the time is Uber, who is taking on local state and city regulations around the country as it tries to offer its innovative (and quite useful) transportation service in various metropolitan areas. You may remember the big fight in DC about some regulations that would have hindered Uber by forcing it to charge high prices. Up in Boston, things are even more bizarre. The company has been effectively told to cease and desist from offering its service. This has happened elsewhere, due to various silly regulations regarding cab and livery services, but in Massachusetts they seem to do everything in an especially screwed up manner and this is no exception.

The reason Uber can no longer serve the Boston region: Because they were making use of this crazy newfangled technology called "GPS" to measure the distances that cars traveled for the purpose of billing users.

It seems that the Massachusetts Division of Standards, and its laws covering "weights and measures," is so out of date that it has not been updated to recognize GPS as an appropriate "weight and measure" system for distance. As if to prove just how incredibly out of touch these folks are, in the official letter ordering Uber to stop service, they repeatedly refer to the iPhone as an "I phone." They also refer to the Global Positioning System as the Global Positioning Services. These are the people in charge of killing off innovation. Incredible.

Basically, the state had someone sign up for Uber, take a ride in the car as a "sting" (one of the people in the car's job title is -- and I'm not joking -- the "Sealer of Weights & Measures") and then cite the driver after seeing that he (*gasp*!) used a GPS device on his phone to measure the distance traveled. When Uber pointed out that GPS has been around and widely used for decades, the Massachusetts Division of Standards argued that may well be... but since GPS is not for commercial purposes they can't accept it. Seriously.

Global Positioning Services (GPS ) technology is not an issue as it is and has been widely used in non-commercial applications for a number of years. However, GPS has not been used in commercial applications for assessing transportation charges until Uber Technologies, Inc. introduced its use for this purpose. The major problem at this time is the fact that there are no established measurement standards for its current application and use in determining transportation costs similar to that of approved measurement systems for taximeters and odometers. Massachusetts law does not sanction unapproved devices for use in commercial transactions.

The idea that GPS isn't used in commercial applications is silly. GPS has been widely used by the military for decades and has been used in commercial applications for quite some time as well. It's beyond silly to think that because some clueless "Sealer of Weights and Measures" is still focused on last century's technology that GPS is not a viable (or even common) technology for this purpose. This seems like a clear case of a totally out of date bureaucracy actively hindering innovation for no reason other than general luddism.

from the huge-victory-for-free-speech dept

We've had a lot of stories this year about police arresting people for filming them. It's become quite a trend. Even worse, a couple weeks ago, we wrote about a police officer in Massachusetts, Michael Sedergren, who is trying to get criminal wiretapping charges brought against a woman who filmed some police officers beating a guy. This officer claims that the woman violated Massachusetts anti-wiretapping law, a common claim from police in such situations.

Segederin may have been better off if he'd waited a couple weeks for an appeals court ruling that came out Friday, because that ruling found that arresting someone for filming the police is a clear violation of both the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. How the case got to this point is a bit complex, but basically, a guy named Simon Glik saw some police arresting someone in Boston, and thought they were using excessive force. He took out his camera phone and began recording. The police saw that and told him to stop taking pictures. He told them he was recording them, and that he'd seen them punch the guy they were arresting. One officer asked him if the phone recorded audio as well and Glik told him it did. At that point, they arrested him, saying that recording audio was a violation of Massachusetts wiretap laws.

Even more ridiculous, they then had him charged not just with that, but also with disturbing the peace and "aiding in the escape of a prisoner." After realizing that last one didn't even pass the guffaw test, Massachusetts officials dropped that charge. A Boston court then dumped the other charges and Glik was free. However, he wanted to take things further, as he thought his treatment was against the law. He first filed a complaint with Boston Police Internal Affairs who promptly set about totally ignoring it. After they refused to investigate, Glik sued the officers who arrested him and the City of Boston in federal court for violating both his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The police officers filed for qualified immunity, which is designed to protect them from frivolous charges from people they arrest.

The district court rejected the officers' rights to qualified immunity, saying that their actions violated the First & Fourth Amendments. Before the rest of the case could go on, the officers appealed, and that brings us to Friday's ruling, which, once again, unequivocally states that recording police in public is protected under the First Amendment, and that the use of Massachusetts wiretapping laws to arrest Glik was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights as well. The ruling (pdf) is a fantastic and quick read and makes the point pretty clearly. Best of all, it not only says that it was a clear violation, but that the officers were basically full of it in suggesting that this was even in question. The court more or less slams the officers for pretending they had a valid excuse to harass a guy who filmed them arresting someone.

The 4th Amendment bit may not be as widely applicable, since it mainly focuses on the Massachusetts wiretapping law. Here, the court notes that the law only covers audio recording in secret. But there is no indication that Glik did any of his filming in secret. It found the officers' arguments that he could have been doing lots of things on his mobile phone completely uncompelling, stating that the "argument suffers from factual as well as legal flaws."

The full ruling is embedded below, but a few choice quotes:

Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting "the free discussion of governmental affairs." Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966). Moreover, as the Court has noted, "[f]reedom of expression has particular significance with respect to government because '[i]t is here that the state has a special incentive to repress opposition and often wields a more effective power of suppression.'" First Nat'l Bank, 435 U.S. at 777 n.11 (alteration in original) (quoting Thomas Emerson, Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment 9 (1966)). This is particularly true of law enforcement officials, who are granted substantial discretion that may be misused to deprive individuals of their liberties....

[....]

In our society, police officers are expected to endure significant burdens caused by citizens' exercise of their First Amendment rights. See City of Houston v. Hill, 482 U.S. 451, 461 (1987) ("[T]he First Amendment protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers."). Indeed, "[t]he freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state." Id. at 462-63. The same restraint demanded of law enforcement officers in the face of "provocative and challenging" speech, id. at 461 (quoting Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4 (1949)), must be expected when they are merely the subject of videotaping that memorializes, without impairing, their work in public spaces.

[....]

The presence of probable cause was not even arguable here. The allegations of the complaint establish that Glik was openly recording the police officers and that they were aware of his surveillance. For the reasons we have discussed, we see no basis in the law for a reasonable officer to conclude that such a conspicuous act of recording was "secret" merely because the officer did not have actual knowledge of whether audio was being recorded.

While this case isn't over yet, it's still a huge victory for those arrested by police for filming them in action. It suggests such people can bring charges against the police for civil rights violations in taking away their First Amendment rights. A tremendous ruling all around.

After frantic calls and a hearing with Registry officials, Gass learned the problem: An antiterrorism computerized facial recognition system that scans a database of millions of state driver’s license images had picked his as a possible fraud.

It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake identity. His driving privileges were returned but, he alleges in a lawsuit, only after 10 days of bureaucratic wrangling to prove he is who he says he is.

Massachusetts bureaucrats seem positively thrilled with the system, claiming that they're sending out 1,500 suspension notices a day based on such reports. To be honest, I can't believe that they really mean per day, seeing as the article also notes that the facial recognition system only called out 1,000 such matches last year (and then later claims 1,860 licenses were revoked last year because of the software, so the numbers are all over the place). But, still, it sounds like a lot of folks in Massachusetts have to re-prove their identity every day because some computer falsely thinks they're someone else.

Either way, the bureaucrats don't seem at all concerned about relying on a highly questionable system to declare people guilty:

Kaprielian said the Registry gives drivers enough time to respond to the suspension letters and that it is the individual’s “burden’’ to clear up any confusion. She added that protecting the public far outweighs any inconvenience Gass or anyone else might experience.

from the if-you-do-that-sort-of-thing dept

I'm not a member of any political party. I even hate the term "independent." When I was first eligible to register to vote, oh so many years ago, the voter registration form told me to check off "Democrat," "Republican" or "Independent." There may have been other options, though I don't remember them. Instead I just skipped that section entirely, and I later received a confirmation of my voter status, which brilliantly listed my party as "BLANK." Since then, I tend to consider my political party to be BLANK and I'm pretty happy with that. However, for those who do like to align yourselves with a particular political party, James O'Keefe writes in to let us know that apparently Massachusetts is the first state in the US that will allow people to officially register as a Pirate Party member. Apparently, the state needs to approve political parties before they can become "recognized." While The Pirate Party has receive some attention, and been able to get two members elected to the European Parliament, it really has not received much attention stateside. I do think that the party pushes some important points concerning internet freedom, free speech and against censorship.

from the locking-up-of-information dept

An anonymous reader sends over the news that the website MuckRock.com -- an open records website -- has received a threat letter from the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, concerning some food stamp data that MuckRock had published. How did MuckRock get the data? It had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, who gave it to them. Apparently, the department now realized that it released the data in error and is trying to erase the mistake by ordering the site to delete the info.

I am writing to inform you that certain information found on the website http://www.muckrock.com, which lists individual retailer redemptions for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is posted in violation of federal law.. [sic] This information was erroneously released by the Department of Transitional Assistance to Spare Change News. Federal law prohibits release of such information under 7 U.S.C. 2018(9)(c), and 7 CFR 278.1(q).

Failure to remove this information may result in fines or imprisonment. 7 U.S.C. 2018(9)(c) (“any person who publishes, divulges, discloses, or makes known in any manner or to any extent not authorized by Federal law (including a regulation) any information obtained under this subsection shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both).

The Department has told the press that it was the federal government which alerted it to the mistake and the department decided to inform the MuckRock owner that he might face potential legal problems from the federal government, but didn't intend the letter to be a direct threat from itself. Of course, now that the news of the demand has been made public, the original information will only get that much more attention...

from the free-speech-ftw dept

In another win for free speech rights over an overly aggressive gov't attempt to censor, a federal judge issued an injunction barring a Massacusetts law that tried to ban certain works from the internet for being "harmful to minors." The judge noted that since the law did not require that the works be "purposefully sent to a person the sender knew to be a minor," it went way too far. There have certainly been a lot of attempts by governments to legislate parts of the First Amendment away, and it's nice to see the courts still believe strongly in protecting at least that Amendment.

from the about-time dept

For quite some time now there have been reports about how carmakers have been forcing car owners to take cars to the dealers for (expensive) repairs, by using special software to diagnose problems in the computer system, and only giving the necessary software to dealers. This is actually one of many nasty consequences of the DMCA's anti-circumvention rules (pay attention Canada), whereby it should be perfectly legal for anyone you ask to work on your car -- but thanks to digital locks placed on your car's computer by automakers, other mechanics would be breaking the law just to figure out how to get around the locks. Every year for the past decade, there are attempts to pass a national "right to repair" act at the federal level to take care of this, but it never goes anywhere.

However, it looks like at least some states are trying to take matters into their own hands. jjmsan points us to the news that Massachusetts is apparently close to creating just such a statewide law, and many are hoping it will drive other states to follow suit. The automakers, of course, are fighting it, but their logic doesn't make much sense:

A spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, an association of 11 vehicle manufacturers including Chrysler Group LLC, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., said aftermarket parts companies are seeking information that would enable them to make inexpensive parts in foreign countries without incurring research and development costs.

"This is a thinly veiled attempt by parts manufacturers to lower the cost of remanufacturing original equipment of manufacturer parts," alliance spokesman Charles Territo said. "Once this information is released, that intellectual property will be in China by the end of the month."

So? If you can't compete with other aftermarket companies, that's your problem. You shouldn't be able to unfairly lock them out of the market and jack up prices just through some software code.

from the lori-drew-redux? dept

In a case that at least brings to mind the Lori Drew lawsuit, prosecutors in Western Massachusetts have figured out how to charge nine teenagers over the suicide death of a fellow student. Like the Drew case, there's an emotional issue here: which is that the bullying and the suicide are horrible stories, and it's a situation where certainly people have a natural inclination to want to punish someone. But it's a lot trickier than that. Punishing people because someone commits suicide sets a really dangerous precedent that could encourage more kids to commit suicide -- thinking that it will get their tormentors "punished." Now, there may actually be much more to this case -- and some of the charges at least suggest there's a possibility of additional activities, such as statutory rape, that happened with some of the teens. However, all of the news reports seem to focus on the fact that these charges were brought because of the suicide.

from the that-makes-two-states dept

For the past few years, it's become increasingly common for police to put GPS devices on suspects' cars to track where they are. But, that's kicked up a bunch of legal questions concerning whether or not it's legal to do that without a warrant. So far, the courts have not really agreed. Earlier this year, we saw one court (a federal appeals court, 4th circuit) say that police didn't need a warrant, but then, just days later, a court in NY ruled the other way, saying that it was a violation of the 4th Amendment. Now, the state Supreme Court in Massachusetts has weighed in as well, again saying that a warrant is needed to put a GPS device on your car. So that makes NY and Massachusetts as states where police can't randomly stick GPS devices on your car. The other 48 states? Good luck...